Monday, December 5, 2011

The STAF Project Part 2

By now a couple of months and numerous meetings have passed. All sorts of ideas are being thrown around, and there's a general excitement. I've put together a small package of rough/concept artwork, to present visuals at the meetings.

Big names are being thrown around for voice-work, including Mos Def, KRS-1,Melvin Van Peebles among others. The main issue is still funding, which I've reminded everyone would need to be sizable and consistent due to the duration of production. It now turns out a major Hollywood actor has shown interest and could possibly supply the funding. When I find out who it is (think Middle-earth) it seems like things could get rolling.

Also, Chris had now brought in Syd Garon, the man behind the legendary film 'Wave Twisters'. I was intimidated at first, but, Syd turned out to be a really genuine guy, and offered up some ideas on production, and I also could talk animation nerd stuff with him.

The story was really big by now, involving cannibals, CIA, doberman like, vinyl hunting skinheads among other things. I got about 6 CD's worth of 'beats' from Madlib. These consist of small 2 minute instrumentals, made up of rough samples. It was great stuff to write to.

All the while, we all had our day jobs, so, things were slow going. Chris had been playing tracks for me off of the new Quasimoto album. I'd loved the first record and had always wished I could have contributed a video. Then, Egon calls me and offers me the Quasimoto "Bullyshit" video from this upcoming album.

Along with that, and a dozen other projects that popped up soon after, the animated film idea took a back seat. I see Chris now from time to time, and we still talk about picking up where we left off, but, for now, the idea remains a dozen or so rough drawings.